PIA14653: F Ring Zoo
 Target Name:  S Rings
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle
 Product Size:  1018 x 808 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Cassini Imaging Team
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA14653.tif (823.6 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA14653.jpg (33.07 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

The F ring shows off a rich variety of phenomena in this image from the Cassini spacecraft. Near the lower-right of the F ring are two "fans" of material radiating out of the main strand (or "core") of the ring. Kinks are apparent all along the core, and dark "channels" cut into the main strand can be seen in places, the result of a recent interaction with the shepherd moon Prometheus (which cannot be seen in this image).

Scientists believe that many of the F ring's diverse features are the result of interactions between ring material and either the shepherd moons or clumps of material within the ring.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about six degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 25, 2012.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 680,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 17 degrees. Image scale is 4 miles (6 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2013-02-18